Miss Fluffy Bum

In just a few days Evelyn is going to become Miss Fluffy Bum. This past week my two orders of cloth diapers arrived and today we went on a trip to the store to get some fluffy safe washing detergent. I have my load of diapers pre-washing this very moment. The first pre-wash in a long line of washes. I'm just winging it too, there was way too much info on the topic to sift through so I figured I would just do a bunch of washes and go from there. Once everything is prepped and ready then it will be all systems go.

I am so very excited about this cloth diapering thing. Those who have never ventured this way may be wondering how on earth it can be exciting. Those who do cloth diaper however know that nothing compares to a cute little bum encased in cotton (or hemp, or bamboo or lusciously soft micro fibre).

Why do I cloth diaper?
I do if for a myriad of reasons. There are the environmental as well as the money saving aspects to consider. Then when you add the cuteness factor, well, why not? Kind of a vague answer I know but I'm not making a case for it. I love the idea in theory, we shall see how it plays out in reality.

Is it hard?
Psh, like I know. I am a total newbie at this. I had no idea where to even begin. I did tons of research on cloth diapering with my first but only 5 yrs later it's a totally new ballgame. I am so thankful for my mommy group friends who gave me lots of direction and recommendations. From what I can tell, it won't be a heck of a lot more difficult than disposables. It might be some added work (and not much really) but when you enjoy what you are doing is it really work?

What's in the stash?
Oh good, I thought you would never ask!!!!!
This is the whole purpose of this post. I want to GUSH about the two boxes of total cuteness that I had delivered to my door. I am such a geek that I took pictures too.

The Stash

As you can there is a good assortment of goodies here. I'll give a breakdown on everything I ordered.

The Breakdown

 Here are the covers that I decided to start with. Covers and prefolds are a more economical route so I decided to have more fun with the girly prints. That way if there are more boys in our future I won't have to break the bank buying more boy patterns and if there is a girl-well, bonus.

Top L-R: Bummis Super Whisper Wrap in Flower, Bummis Super Whisper Wrap in Bloom, Blueberry Cover in Pink Lemonade

Bottom L-R: Rumperooz Cover in Lux, Thirsties Duo Wrap in Alice Brights

The above photo is the pocket diapers. These are a rather ingenious invention for cloth diapering. Simply it is a cover that you stuff an insert into the pocket for. These are very close to disposables for ease of use. As you can see these are more gender neutral colours here. Pocket diapers are more expensive per piece so I didn't want to go crazy with the girly prints. I will get a few in the ones I like best but you get the idea.

Starting clockwise at the green pattern: Blueberry Minky in Winter Sage, Fuzzibunz in Watermelon, Happy Heiny in Latte, Fuzzibunz in Buttercream and Soft Bums Omni in Coconut. 

Since I am wanting to get the hang of things I decided to sample a bit here and there. I decided for prefolds to try the Bummis and the Thirsties. Whichever I like better I will order more of. I also wanted to try the Thirsties Duo Insert to see how that goes over. Lastly there is a 3 pack of Thirsties doublers.

 If I am cloth diapering I may as well cloth wipe too. I don't see the sense in using disposable wipes at this point because then you are just adding to the fuss. With cloth wipes I can just toss them in the wet bag with the diapers. As I am sure you can read I got a pack of the Bum Genius wipes and a pack of the Thirsties wipes. I'll have to get more though. I really want to try the Fuzzibunz wipes but on the sites I all checked they were always sold out. That must mean they are good which makes me want them all the more. The little bag on the left are the wipes cubes. Just dissolve one in a spray bottle of water and there ya go. They smell strange but strangely good. Better than the fake funky smelling disposable wipes that is for sure.

Here we have wet bags. If you were wondering how the laundry part plays into this show well, these babies here are the supporting actors. They contain the smell and wetness of soiled diapers (or so I've been told). My main wet bag is the white and coloured one on the right. It is a half moon shape made by Rumperooz in the pattern Gumball. I do plan to wash every night to stay on top of things so I have a spare wet bag which is the top one on the left. It is from Planet Wise in the pattern Fiesta. On the bottom left is actually a wet/dry bag. I can keep the dirty and clean diapers in separate compartments without any cross contamination. This is for cloth diapering on the go. The wet/dry bag is also made by Planet Wise and in the pattern Cosmic. 

There ya go. My stash. I will be adding to it you can bet on that. Don't tell Daddy but I already have one on pre-order. I didn't realize that new prints being released was a pre-order kind of affair but it is and I am in love the the Bum Genius 4.0 print Lovelace. 

I want to give a shout out to the web sites I ordered from. I have had nothing but great experiences with all of them and while I do like spreading the love (hence ordering from various sites) they have my loyalty for sure. If you are a cloth diaperer or interested in cloth diapering please check out So Green Baby, Caterpillar Baby and Baby Bell Hop. I received prompt and very courteous service from all of them (and great shipping deals for order over $100). Can you tell I'm a happy customer?

If you are interested in any of the products I mentioned fee free to check out their web sites. Each diaper company, style, format etc. has it's own advantages and benefits. I did a ton of research. I suggest anyone else looking at cloth diapering do the same. For ease of research here are some links:

Bummis
Thirsties Baby
Blueberry Diapers
Bum Genius
Fuzzibunz
Soft Bums
Happy Heinys
Rumparooz
Planet Wise

I hear the washer is done so I need to run another pre-wash. About the detergent...I picked up the Purex Free and Clear which is supposedly good for cloth diapers (actually recommended by Soft Bums). When I place an order for more stuff in the VERY near future I am going to order up some samples of Laundry Tarts Soap, Rockin-Green Soap and maybe some soap nuts too. I have wish lists miles long. On that note, off to run the wash again. 

Guess what!! Fluffy Bums make me HAPPY :)

This Week at School

I have made mention before that we are a homeschooling family. Sometimes I don't think I deserve to say that yet because we are so new to it. However, that is a direction we have embarked upon so I guess that does make us a homeschooling family to whatever degree. I am not going to get into the rhyme or reason as to how we took this road less traveled because that is not my focus. There are lots of fantastic homeschooling blogs out there though. I swear without them I would be lost.

There are many different parts of our life in our happy family and homeschooling just happens to be one of them. So far it's working out well. I have a general schedule to follow, sometimes we are off and sometimes we are on. With three kids 5 and under that is just how the dice rolls.

With all that being said I am coming to my point. I am going to begin a regular Friday post that will be a re-cap of what we did at school this week. I didn't take any pictures this week but in the upcoming weeks I certainly hope to so that I can show some memorable highlights of our week.

This week happened to actually mark our official start of our homeschooling year. It took me a very long time to decide on a route that I would take regarding curriculum. There isn't a lot of formal curricula for Kindergarten and Pre-school. Yes there are some out there but out of the few options there wasn't anything I particularly liked or saw the value in. Or at least not yet.

So...a few words on curriculum. I put together a pile of resources on my own and am using tons of ideas from various sources. My primary guide though is our provincial curriculum. Along with the provincial curriculum builder I have been able to go through the objectives and goals of the kindergarten year and then have a list of suggested activities or resources with which to accomplish those goals. Based on these provincial guidelines I can also see where we are excelling and where we are lagging behind. I already know that Vik has accomplished several kindergarten outcomes. In years to come I plan to always use a combination of formal and informal curricula. I don't think you get the whole package in one place. There will always be bits and pieces that don't fit with us and that is fine.

I was going to post here what our daily plan consists of but I am toying with the idea of doing that in a post or giving that a page all of it's own. I am leaning towards the latter. Stay tuned for that update.

In the future our school week re-cap will be shorter I promise. This inaugural one though I felt needed an intro. So without further ado here are a few of our highlights:

This week was brought to us by the letters A & B and the numbers 2 & 3. Turns out Mr. Kindergarten can't get enough worksheets. He gobbles them up. For the letters he practiced writing the letter and then doing a few letter find exercises on the first day and then a few letter activities on the second day. His favourite letter activity is using the scrabble letters to spell things. He has such an interest in spelling and reading already. I've led the horse to water and it is drinking the whole pond. We aren't doing a whole lot with Max yet as he is primarily just along for the ride but when Vik is on worksheets Max is colouring in letters and then the activities they both do together. Number worksheets consist of writing the number and spelling the word. There are others that require him to colour or circle the right number of an object. The second day of the number is number activities to reinforce the number.

That covers the core basics of letters and numbers. So next we have social studies and science. As this is the beginning for us we are transitioning slowly into these subjects. This week the boys were slowly introduced to the earth as a whole. We had lots of fun using google earth to look at all sorts of different parts of the world. I loved how on our second day Vik was asking to see France. Next week will be a slow introduction into some science basics then we will begin to delve into a our social studies and science units.

That is some of this week. Doesn't seem like a whole lot but there are also a lot of other bits and pieces of learning that gets done throughout the day. Next week will see the introduction of the fun subjects of art and music as well as physical education/health and religion. I look forward to updating next Friday what we did at school this upcoming week. I'll have pictures for sure.

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.  ~Stacia Tauscher

The Big Show

A while ago I mentioned that Daddy and I would be playing a little show for a fundraiser. This past Friday, September 30th was the fundraiser. We practiced and practiced our four chosen songs over and over and over and over again. We organized our babysitting and closer to the day I began to wonder what I would wear (picked up a cute top and earrings and shoes the day before the show).

The day of the show was busy. I had practicing to still do, had to tidy the house and Daddy still worked a full day that day. My sister came over to watch little girl and the boys went over to granny's house for a sleepover. We were very lucky that our friend was available and kind enough to come and video the show for us (she has since said that if we have other shows then she would video that as well).

Seeing as how it was a fundraiser there was a $10 charge for entrance to the "coffee house" and they made extra money through concession sales (I had tea and sugar cookies). The church basement it was being held in was done up with twinkle lights and other decor which made for a nice venue.

Overall it was a FANTASTIC experience and a taste of greater things to come. There were a few mistakes and stumbles along the way but nothing that anyone could tell (or at least I think...you tell me). One thing that I really liked about it was that because of the venue set up there were still people talking which provided a distraction-a distraction that I did not succumb to, that in itself was a great learning experience.

Lastly, I was thrilled at how well my original compositions went over. Getting up on a stage and performing is one thing, but to perform you own work is both humbling and daunting. You never know how it will be received. In this case the audience was in approval.

As I said before we had a friend video tape the show for us. We played 4 songs, each of which has it's own video.

This first video is of the first song I wrote on guitar. I actually have two versions of it. There is piano version which I previously posted the youtube link to. This (obviously) is the guitar version which is a tad peppier.

IN GOD

THE SOURCE

ASK THE LORD

FEEL THE LORD

I hope you enjoyed watching the videos. Please feel free to share them. I need all the promotion I can get.

Rock On!